Draymond Green warned Nick Young. He told him not to bet Stephen Curry.

But Young considers himself a shooter. Nearly 40 percent of his shots in his 10-plus year career have been from 3. The Warriors signed him because they wanted his shooting off the bench. He knows a thing or two about the craft, including about the difficulty of halfcourt shots. So despite Green's warning, Young challenged Curry anyway.

“The first one,” Young recalled, “he stepped right up and — the first one. I learned right then. Don't bet that dude.”

Welcome to the Golden State Warriors School of Shooting, graduate institute for basketball's premiere skill. Scratch that, it's a shooting doctoral program. This is Ph.D.-level.

On this team, shooting is a discipline to be practiced and a theory course full of research and analysis. It is a constantly evolving dissertation that covers the finest details. This is where shooters come and learn how much they don't know about shooting. Just by being here, they get better. Even the top students — Curry, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant — are still growing.

“You've got two of the greatest shooters to ever play in Klay and Steph,” Durant said. “Then you've got Nick Young who can get hot. Omri (Casspi). Draymond Green can get hot probably once a week.”

Assistant coach Bruce Fraser is the director of the program. They call him Q — short for “Question Man,” a nickname Steve Kerr gave him in college for all the questions he asked. Fraser stopped short of calling himself the professor of this shooting institution, which is too bad. Professor Q would've been cool.

A Long Beach native, Fraser is the son of a basketball coach. Bill Fraser succeeded Lute Olson at Long Beach City College, where Q spent a year before transferring to play for Olson at Arizona.

He scarcely played in his three years with the Wildcats, which coincided with two of Kerr's years on the team. But the 6-foot-5 guard could “shoot it a little bit” — even though he only made 4 of his 7 shots (and 6 of 11 free throws). The NCAA adopted the 3-point line his senior year, but Fraser never took a 3 in college. But the pedigree was there.

“He was a good shooter in high school,” Kerr said. “We talked a lot about shooting in college.”

Fraser stayed on as an assistant under Olson — they became a No. 1 seed with Kerr, Sean Elliott and Tom Tolbert — before leaving basketball to work in sound and music on movies for 20th Century Fox. In 1994, Elliott linked Fraser with noted NBA coach Larry Brown. Fraser spent the 1994-95 season working under Brown with the Pacers, who reached the Eastern Conference finals behind Reggie Miller.

With Indiana, Fraser was a behind-the-bench assistant who rebounded for players and talked shooting, a lot of the time with Miller. This was before teams had player development coaches.

In 2007, Kerr, then-general manager of the Suns, brought Fraser to Phoenix. That began Fraser's relationship with Steve Nash and his specialty of working one-on-one with shooters. In 2007-08, Nash set career highs in 3-pointers made (178) and 3-point percentage (47.0) in his first year with Fraser as his personal trainer.

So it was an easy call for Kerr when he became head coach of the Warriors in May 2014 to bring Fraser with him. And now he finds himself among the greatest crop of shooters on one team in NBA history.

“I feel like I add little things that help,” Fraser said. “It is a bit of a grad school but these guys are almost doctors. It's almost like I'm learning under them, but I know what they do so well that they sometimes don't see. I just feel like I add little things. I've read all their textbooks. I know their shots inside and out. So my job is to remind them of what they already know and maybe build on it.”

The Warriors were down 22 points at the half against the 76ers. Curry had missed all four of his 3-point attempts, making him 0 for his last 15 in Philadelphia.

Frustrated, the greatest shooter the NBA has ever seen sought out some advice. He asked Fraser, the Warriors assistant coach he works with most, what he was doing wrong. What Fraser told him helped Curry make all four of his 3-pointers in the third quarter, scoring 20 of the Warriors' 47 points as they rallied to squash the 76ers.

Curry was compelled to thank Fraser during his postgame interviews.

“He told me to stop trying to swish it and aim for the back of the rim to help me get a better follow through on my shot,” Curry said. “When I try to swish it, I tend to get a little relaxed and don't finish my shot. Totally against my normal thought process but needed that … to get going.”

Bruce Fraser has played a huge role in the continued development of Stephen Curry. (Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images)

On the Warriors, shooting gets broken down to the most minute details. It is both art and science: art in that each player's shot is unique and part of his own creative expression; science in how techniques are examined for understanding and evidence guides the process.

But here is the relatively weird part about this School of Shooting: They don't talk about shooting much with each other. They aren't like hitters in the dugout discussing approaches, digesting what happened in an at-bat and sharing secrets. They aren't in practice sharing stories about how they got hot because of an adjustment. This is the art side.

Shooting is so personal. Being shooters, they know that, so they avoid infringing on another man's art.

Fraser suggested to Durant last season that he and Curry shoot together. Two of the best shooters in the history of the game, Curry and Durant wouldn't ordinarily exchange notes. The notes from Durant, a 6-foot-11 forward who shoots with the ease of breathing, probably wouldn't make sense to the 6-3 guard who had to quicken his release to avoid getting blocked. But Fraser knew they could push each other.

So, in what was also a way to develop their bond as new teammates, Durant began to take part in shooting drills with Curry on the two-time MVP's favorite post-practice basket. Sometimes, they compete against each other. Sometimes, they work together in drills to pursue perfect scores. It's a shooting version of iron sharpening iron.

Shooting competitions and drills are like class. It’s the way to learn what you need because rarely does anyone ask. Patrick McCaw sits next to Curry in the locker room and doesn’t pepper the Warriors’ star with questions.

“I just watch,” McCaw said. “I’m more a visual learner. Plus, some guys don’t like to give away their secrets.”

Curry isn't going to just tell Young he leans left on his shot; it's been working for him for years. It is hard to duplicate Shaun Livingston's outstretched, release-at-the-peak turnaround jumper unless you're 6-7 with a 7-foot-wingspan. Andre Iguodala is so much more comfortable when his feet are properly aligned, and he can squat a little to get a good rhythm on his jumper, which makes his release slower. Thompson, who can and often does disregard his lower body because his upper body form is so perfect, can't advise Iguodala on how to shoot his shot better.

So they just watch, borrow and incorporate.

“You can't look at someone and be a good shooter,” Fraser said. “But you can look at them, emulate what you see into what you're doing and make yourself better. Only if you put the work in. It's not osmosis. If you're going to watch Steph and say, 'I'm going to try to make my shot exactly like Steph's,' that would be a mistake. But if you're going to take pieces of it, or elements of some of the things he does, then I would say you can learn and get better.

“If you're just talking about form, then you can watch and learn,” Fraser continued. “But if you're talking about his drills and stuff, you have to at some point go up and say, 'Why are you doing that?' If you just watch him handling the ball and going into shots, you think, 'Oh he's just working on his moves.' The reality is he is working on transitioning the ball into his pocket so he can get the shot off quicker. But if you try and take that as a kid and do it, you might miss so much that you go the wrong way with it.”

Speaking of Curry, Fraser has a new assignment on his hands. helping Curry figure out what’s wrong with his shot. He is shooting just 37 percent from 3 this year, on pace for the worst in his career. He set a career-low with 41.1 percent from 3 last season.

Casspi, one of the newcomers, has a distinct shot. It's a push shot on which he doesn't get much lift off the ground. But the arc is incredibly high. It launches from his 6-9 frame and rainbows toward the rim, cascading to a dramatic fall.

His teammates can’t help but marvel.

“My percentage goes way up when I have the right arc on it,” said Casspi, who studies his own shot closely. “Unless you have a really high jump — like Ray Allen, he has a flat shot, but he jumped high off the floor and he had long arms, so he didn't need a lot of arc. I shoot a different shot. If it hits the back rim, it was flat. If it was short, I have to put more on it. If it's all net, perfect.”

Another unique part about Casspi's shot is the quick two-step he takes before every shot. Curry's joked with him about it. It's part of his rhythm. He said it gives him energy. Like a tick, Casspi steps into every shot with a quick one-two before hoisting.

“But it's consistent,” said Curry, who heard Casspi explaining it as he walked by. Curry then mimicked Casspi's two-step. “It's the same shot every time.”

They may not talk to each other about shooting. But the lessons they learn from watching one another are like video tutorials. They study each other's shots and then, with due diligence, incorporate the pieces that are relevant into their own process. That's the science part.

Curry, Durant, Thompson — the best shooters put in so much time in the lab. Curry is the last one off the court. Durant and Thompson come in on off days. It sets a bar for everyone else.

When players say they are getting their shots up, they're often just shooting, creating muscle memories through repetition. But for the Warriors' shooters, getting shots up means experimentation. It means adding and subtracting.

Iguodala had to get the hitch out of his free-throw motion. Thompson had to get comfortable making mid-range pull-ups with contact. Green had to add arc to his 3-pointer.

“One thing you notice about Steph and Klay, their shots end in the same position every time,” Green said, holding up his follow-through. “Every time. I learned from watching them that you want to shoot the same shot every time.”

Livingston works on his 3-pointer. He won't shoot them in the games, but he drains them in practice regularly. He's learned he is a rhythm shooter who is most comfortable off the dribble. But his 3-pointers would be of a catch-and-shoot variety, which is not in his comfort zone. So he's working to make that natural.

In the meantime, he's content with being the best mid-range shooter on the team.

“I can't. I can't claim that,” Livingston said with a smile that was really claiming it. “David West has mid-range. Steph's efficient everywhere. It's just that the bulk of my shots are mid-range. But we've got shooters. KD, man. Steph is where you start and then KD. Man, KD has it all over the floor from deep, with touch, free throws, pull-up, off the dribble.”

Livingston is a window into the secret sauce in this postgraduate program of shooting. It is less about shooting technique than it is about locations. Livingston knows he's an “off-the-bounce” shooter and not a spot-up guy, so he has mastered the shots he will get from the block, where his shots will come in the Warriors’ offense.

What Fraser does is combine his understanding of Kerr's system with his understanding of the individual. So his work with Casspi isn't on the arc of his shot, but helping him learn where his shots will be so Casspi can work on those.

Green is going to get all the 3s he can take from the left and right wings, and some from dead center, because that's where he ends up after setting the screen for Curry and popping out. West, a hub of the offense when he's in, will get a lot of his looks from the elbow. For Casspi, they will come on the move, whether in transition or curling off screens, or stand-still 3-pointers in the corner.

Another part of the syllabus is how to get open shots. The Warriors believe movement creates more open shots, and, obviously, players will shoot better the more open shots they get. This philosophy requires a paradigm shift for some of the newcomers, who came to the Warriors used to getting their shots either from standing still and waiting for a pass or by creating it themselves off the dribble.

Casspi either learned quickly or already understood, because he's got the art of movement down. Young is still adjusting.

It worked wonders for Durant, who was the iso king with the Thunder — his field-goal percentage skyrocketed last season to a career-best 53.7 percent. This season, he's on pace for a career high in 3-point percentage (43.2).

West is on pace to shatter his career best in field-goal percentage, currently at 66.7 percent. So is Casspi (59.2). Young has never shot this well inside the arc (57.7). Thompson is on pace for career highs from the field and from 3. Livingston set career highs in field-goal percentage the previous two seasons, and has slumped down to 50 percent this year.

Nope, you can't pass the Golden State Warriors School of Shooting without at least a B average.

(Top photo: Bart Young/NBAE via Getty Images)

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Marcus Thompson II is a lead columnist at The Athletic Bay Area. He is a prominent voice in the local sports scene after 18 years with Bay Area News Group, including 10 seasons covering the Warriors and four as a columnist. Marcus is also the author of the best-selling biography "GOLDEN: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry." Follow Marcus on Twitter @thompsonscribe.